


i've tried to reply (but i'm shaking inside)

by leominoris



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Aged Up NCT Dream, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Future Fic, Implied Sexual Content, Injury Recovery, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27290608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leominoris/pseuds/leominoris
Summary: He knows Jaemin wants to be sharp and jagged and to push away so no one can get close enough to see the cracks beneath the shiny veneer he's had to put together over and over again. But two years apart do little in the face of what feels like a lifetime, not when you're Zhong Chenle and want answers, want to understand.Years later. What is left is shards and dust and pebbles.On beginning again.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	i've tried to reply (but i'm shaking inside)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [englishsummerrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/gifts).



> as i write this it is still october 30th and as such i think it still passes as an acceptable contribution to yoon day! so! happy birthday, yoon! i've already told you that but repetition is also a technique in poetry so it's okay! ( ~~i ignore that this is not how it works~~ )  
> this is probably nothing you would ever ask for if you had the choice but it's what apparently grew out of the sum of our conversations so far and i hope that, whether you would've asked or not, this one can bring you a smile. getting to know you is, without exaggerating, one of the most precious little bits 2020 has allowed me to have and i am very grateful for it and i hope that we can continue to be friends in the future too!
> 
> thank you to everyone who read over it and reassured me that this is in fact okay enough to post! i won't name you all because i am tired and will forget someone but you know who you are, know that i love you, thank you!  
> the title is borrowed from pusher and mothica's [clear](https://youtu.be/WkV0jnWbTFw) that half-accidentally fits a lot of this oddly well.

"It's gotten worse, hasn't it?"  
Jaemin withstands the urge to tug at the hem of his shirt as if it weren't covering the small of his back already. Chenle's fingers find the spot anyway, warm even through the light knit fabric.

"You made me come twice last night," he offers a non-answer and swats lightly at the sneaky fingers trying to steal a slice of ham from the frying pan.  
"I'm sore, that's all. I'm not twenty anymore."  
Chenle hums and shifts, lazily wrapping himself around Jaemin. He doesn't believe him, that much is clear from the unconvinced timbre of his voice but what matters more in the moment is breakfast sizzling away on the stove and so the conversation fades out into raspy early morning whispers again. 

This is not the daily life Jaemin imagined he'd have by age thirty when he was a child. At five, the peak of adulthood had seemed like having someone to love, three children, a job at a hospital and having a pet samoyed.  
Reality pans out differently because his grades never measured up to what medical school would require of him and three children by thirty is a rather ambitious goal these days. The samoyed doesn't fit into his busy filming schedules, as much as he tries to justify that he'd find a pet sitter, and as for his love life–

Well. And as for his love life, this is what he has: a paper heart worn down around the edges and fingers curling towards the ocean waves, well aware that nothing he does will keep it in one place for long. It's okay, he tells himself, he's never needed more than that anyway. It'd be selfish to ask for more.

(And here's the thing, Jaemin is selfish about plenty of things. Sometimes he wishes he could be selfish in this regard too.)

Breakfast is growing cold on the counter but it's hard to care with Chenle insistently pushing him back onto the couch, their kiss more teeth than lips. It's overwhelming, as if Jaemin hadn't gone through the motions of it so many times before he has a hard time telling when it began at all, but it _is_ , breathtaking, dizzying, disorienting.

No one warned him that giving his heart away would be like tossing it off the precipice and waiting for it to hit the ground and burst into a million splinters. He's still waiting for that sickening crack to bracket the fall, to signal the beginning of the end.

Instead, Chenle giggles and his hands push gently and it feels like something else breaks. He's not sure where he takes the force to shove Chenle away because his arms feel numb and for what feels like too long and can't have been more than a split second he's 177 centimetres of sharp, bone-deep hurt.

Like a spider web it stretches out across his back, finding the cracks physiotherapy couldn't fill and strong-arming them wide open. The wail – and it's in his voice, he notes with a detached fascination in the back of his head – is horrifying; weak and brittle, more air than vocal chords. Chenle looks like he took a knife to the chest.

Jaemin scrabbles away as much as his arms will allow him to lift his weight. His wrists ache when he pushes his palms too quickly against the cushions and the motion nearly propels him off the couch altogether, only one of Chenle's warm, big hands wrapping around his thigh keeping him somewhat in place.  
For a terrifyingly long moment all he can do is stare and–

  
  


Stare and what?  
Wait for his heart to hit the bottom of the pit?  
  


_It's gotten worse, hasn't it?_

_—_

This is the first time Chenle stays.

  
"I'm fine," Jaemin says with an embarrassed laugh and it hits him for the first time that most of all, Jaemin never mentions his back because he feels shame. The knowledge of it doesn't quite sit right and aches the same way a splinter just under his skin would, easy to pinpoint, sharp and insistent but hard to remedy in the moment. 

There are no tweezers for souls and no band-aids for the knowledge that after thirteen years Jaemin still stubbornly chooses not to trust over and over again.

"You're a horrible liar," Chenle says and laughs back. It's not quite true, he knows. There is little that Jaemin does horribly when he cares.  
"I'm getting you ice."

  
  


Jaemin does not, in fact, have ice but he does have a tub of stinky muscle gel at the back of his bathroom cabinet Chenle remembers registering plenty of times on the hunt for his toothbrush but never really thinking much of. Any respectable gym rat with a packed acting schedule would keep the most basic of pain relief options at hand.

He's not sure if this is the only reason Jaemin has it, thinking of it now, and there's a part of Chenle that aches to ask and confront, no matter how badly Jaemin will bristle and try to talk his way out of it.

But this is the first time since he returned from enlistment he's been allowed to stay over at all and the first time in years that Chenle sees him anywhere close to having his walls down. Right now, Na Jaemin is a cornered beast and thinking about the path of burnt bridges he's watched him leave behind pushing will cost him a limb and his patience and will leave them both feeling empty and burnt.

And maybe he uses a little more force than necessary when he massages the gel into Jaemin's lower back. The only mercy granted is that he doesn't touch on the scars, doesn't comment on how there is no way they were there pre-enlistment. 

Chenle feels a flash of guilt for taking such satisfaction in it but it serves Jaemin right, _liar_.   
There are no heroes in showbiz, contrary to what the public is supposed to believe.

It's easier than to think on how he thought he knew Jaemin's body by heart, past tense.

"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Chenle repeats into the stifling silence of Jaemin's living room. Jaemin isn't facing him. In fact, Jaemin doesn't even seem to be here in this moment, his expression vacant and tired in ways the cameras and make-up hide so skillfully that Chenle wouldn't believe it hadn't they spent half of their lives embroiled in each other's spaces.

"Military," is Jaemin's response as if the word alone would absolve him from having to be honest.  
"That's not how it works," Chenle quips and toes Jaemin's shirt towards where he's curled up into himself. From this angle Jaemin is a precarious balancing act of bone and skin and mulish stubbornness, bound to fall to pieces sooner rather than later. 

Chenle reaches out and lets his fingers inch over the arches of Jaemin's ribs and wonders if he sticks to his military exercise regime and how much of it is vanity and how much is the sick need to punish himself for– well. Whatever Jaemin sees fit to punish himself for.  
If asked Chenle is happy to share how he doesn't care to work out past what he needs to feel healthy and fit enough to keep up with idol life. One might argue that the privilege of a solid metabolism and a natural ability to pull himself together when necessary make it easier on him but to be honest, Chenle likes Donghyuck's way of putting it best — _the ability to know when to give fucks and when to keep them_.

"How do you think it works then?" Jaemin asks and his eyes come back into focus. Chenle inches closer, pulls him between his legs so he can blanket Jaemin's bare back with his own body. He is feverishly warm in the same way he's always been, as if he can't lock away the warmth he emits, try as he might.

He knows Jaemin wants to be sharp and jagged and to push away so no one can get close enough to see the cracks beneath the shiny veneer he's had to put together over and over again. But two years apart do little in the face of what feels like a lifetime, not when you're Zhong Chenle and want answers, want to understand.

"Dunno," he admits and leans his cheek against Jaemin's shoulder. His touch prompts a shudder, the softest of earthquakes and it might just be the most honest of confessions that have been made this morning.

"You're older, you explain," Chenle whispers and he isn't sure he ever truly gets an answer. But he feels Jaemin's fingers carefully slot over his and listens to him breathe until the tension leaves and all that's left to do is to allow himself to feel hurt.

It's not what Chenle hoped for but it's a start. And when you're starting from burnt earth knowing that a start is possible can mean a world of a difference.

—

"So he's talking to you," Jeno grumbles. His hair has been somewhat recently cut and Chenle still greatly enjoys how he allows him to have at it in whatever way he wants, petting, tugging, gently running his fingernails along Jeno's scalp until his boyfriend turns pliant and soft underneath his hands.

"Hm?"

Chenle knows what he's talking about but this isn't an instance where he thinks he's required to voice what no one else seems to be able to want to touch on openly.

"Jaemin. Didn't you mention going to see him last night?"

The face Jeno makes at the affirmative noise is in equal parts endearing when it shouldn't be and gut-wrenching. Chenle leans down just to see if he can kiss it away but the heartbroken crease between his eyebrows won't vanish no matter what.

"You still haven't talked?"

Jeno goes silent and for a moment Chenle wonders if he's fallen asleep. It wouldn't be the first time, they've both been busy and between his own rehearsals for The Phantom of the Opera and Jeno's CF shoots colliding almost aggressively with his responsibilities on Weekly Idol sleep sounds like an urban myth, one that tired slaves of capitalism in their mid-thirties claim to faintly remember but can never quite replicate.

"The last time we spoke face to face was when Renjun and Jisung hosted that get-together. He–" Once again, Jeno goes almost unnaturally still.

"I only got a text informing me on no unclear terms that–" Something in his voice changes and goes clinical, mimicking the tone Chenle knows the secretaries at their management use with particularly difficult callers, "–he would be enlisting no longer participate in any NCT releases until June of 2029."

Adding up the nine months since Jaemin had been released from the navy and the three before the silence was inching closer and closer to the three-year mark.

"We never fought or anything," Jeno adds and Chenle can't help but resent Jaemin a little for making him hurt like this — making them all hurt like this.

He thinks about the caged animal he soothed earlier in the day and, a little sadder, with a heavier heart, about how one day, Jaemin's hurts might find an end and he'll wake up to the realization that he bit every hand that ventured too close to the wound.

"I just wish he'd said _something_."

"When he left?"

"And when he came back. And when he got mad at me for suggesting that he take a break. I didn't even know he was angry until I talked to Donghyuck about it."

Jeno looks miserable. And tired. Chenle kisses the bags under his eyes even though it'll do nothing to blur the blooming violets into Jeno's milky skin.

"You're not going to tell me to try and look at it from his point of view?"

Chenle shakes his head – and then shakes it again to get his fringe out of his eyes.

"He was an ass about it. I don't see why you should try to understand that."

Jeno laughs and it's a sad, exhausted, wheezing sound but it _is_ a laugh and Chenle takes comfort in that.

"But he's always been our moody bastard, hasn't he?"

And the way Jeno says _our_ with the unerring ownership in a way that implies more than the entirety of them and the ways they've found to give to each other what their profession never allowed them to have otherwise. The way Jeno says _our_ means just the two of them and he's right. If he hadn't been Chenle wouldn't have taken Jaemin's attempts at shrugging off the coat of excuses he's woven himself as a sign of rue, he wouldn't have cared to.

"Well, our moody bastard owes you an apology." Chenle shrugs.  
"Though you might have to ask him for one. I get the feeling that he might not be in the business for apologizing for unreasonable self-defence mechanisms just yet."

—

When Jaemin gets home Donghyuck is sitting on the kitchen counter and eating what Jaemin knows to be the very last remaining bit of his favourite cereal. (It should be alright, he shouldn't be ingesting sugar like that anyway. It still irks him that Donghyuck didn't even bother to ask.)

"Jisung is having a going-away concert," the announcement comes with very little preamble. The way they use words has turned rougher over the time spent as part of the Marine Corps but it's a luxury they've earned. 

"I'm aware."

"Good. I got you tickets because Jisung is terrified of bringing them over himself. He won't put it that way because he knows I'll tease but Renjun said he got upset the other day."

And the thing is: Jaemin feels bad. He truly does. But Jisung has always believed the hardest in an image that became increasingly hard to sustain. Best for him not to be around when the mirrors and the smokes failed their duty at last. The fact that he still wanted Jaemin to come to his concert spoke volumes about how stubbornly he refuses to take the hint still.

Jaemin wagers it's a necessary skill to have when you share as much of your heart with Donghyuck and Renjun as Jisung has.

"Tickets?"

The plural is what takes him a little aback. Jaemin has dated since being discharged but none of it has been permanent enough for it to warrant introduction to the others, or what is left of them: Huang Renjun angrily holding onto a figurative wrist, aggressively tearing him back into his life when he feels like it's been too long since Jaemin last showed his face and Lee Donghyuck who took it upon himself to annoy Jaemin into seeing his military service for what it was — military service, _duh_ — rather than a self-inflicted punishment.

"Three of them, even, because we're feeling generous," Donghyuck continues, undeterred.  
"Which you better appreciate because Renjun and I had to work like fools to keep Chenle from buying a ticket to his best friend's last show before he shaves his head and turns into a cryptid."

Ah. And there it is.

"I'm not your delivery boy." Jaemin brushes past Donghyuck and opens the fridge to stare at its barren contents. If there's a cosmic message hidden between the half-empty juice carton and the dinner leftovers, he can't make it out.  
"No, you're not," Donghyuck agrees and hops off the counter. His spoon clinks uncomfortably in the now-empty bowl, once when his feet meet the ground, once when he sets it down in the sink.  
"But you're the perfect person for the job and if any of us have to watch that shitshow any longer I might throw you out the window. Jeno is pissed and I get that you're scared–"  
"I'm not _scared_ and Jeno doesn't care, he's fine."  
Donghyuck looks furious enough at the interruption to prompt Jaemin to carefully close the fridge, wincing when the closing mechanism hisses too loudly for the sudden silence of the kitchen.  
"As I was saying," Donghyuck repeats sharply. "Jeno is pissed and I get that you're scared but you've had almost one year to wallow in your self-pity. Do something about it. I don't fucking care _what_ it is but you broke it, you fix it."

Now there are a number of things that happen in relatively quick succession. For one, Jaemin's phone buzzes in his pocket and it feels like a prank in horribly bad taste when he checks it only to watch a burst of messages notifications erupt over the screen. _Chenle_ , the contact info reads and Jaemin curses.

"Your manager or a date you stood up?"  
Donghyuck asks, shifting his weight from one leg onto the other. The way he leans against the counter is irritatingly smug and Jaemin takes pleasure in correcting him, even if he finds the timing uncomfortably convenient.  
"Chenle."  
Jaemin is sure there's a comeback burning on the tip Donghyuck's tongue but he doesn't catch it, for this is what happens next:

It's like a knife to the spine, sudden and piercing and it numbs him for a brief moment before the full extent of the pain kicks in. It's not crippling, he buckles but barely bends underneath it but Donghyuck can tell anyway from the way Jaemin's face slips just enough to betray more than easily fixed discomfort. 

"Where are your painkillers?" Jaemin hears his friend's voice through the cacophony of burning limbs and brain fog and feels a set of warm fingers on his forehead brushing his hair out of his face – freshly dyed a warm chestnut brown, he thinks, trying to focus on the memory and his mirror image at the salon. It's better than thinking about how much pain he's in.  
"No," he rasps stubbornly and he can feel how Donghyuck tenses up at the refusal, radiating indignation and exasperation before he loops an arm around Jaemin's waist.

He'd never admit it out loud but Jaemin still feels a welling-up hiccup of fear when he feels Donghyuck's arm brush against the incisions. It's been eight months, there is nothing raw left to touch from the outside. He still allows himself to be half-hauled to the bedroom. It's humiliating but between the time they've spent together as soldiers rather than group mates there have been worse moments.

"I'm replying to Chenle," Donghyuck announces when he picks Jaemin's phone from his pocket.  
"Let me, I'll unlock the screen for you."  
"You haven't changed your passcode in years."  
The way Donghyuck examines his face tells Jaemin that he's unsure — but he's _right_ and whatever clues he gives away, they're enough.

  
He waits for the pillows to swallow him as he watches Donghyuck's thumb glide over the screen and it feels almost incriminating, _zero-four-two-three_.

—

There's a weight in the pit of Jeno's stomach, leaden and cold and rooting him to the spot. The spot in question is one step away from Jaemin's front door, marble tile underneath Jeno's worn-out sneakers that he still refuses to throw away as long as they're functional. 

Now that he's thinking of it, it was Chenle and Jaemin specifically who pooled together the money for them because, as one would expect, they couldn't have settled on something utilitarian over something with a fancy brand name and an equally fancy price tag attached to it.

He wishes he'd picked something else to wear. It doesn't matter, Donghyuck said he gave Jaemin express orders to stay in bed and Jaemin may not want to admit it but if there is someone who knows how to keep him in check, it's Donghyuck.  
"You know the door code," he mumbles instead as Chenle's fingers flit over the lock pad. He used to know Jaemin's last code too, the one for the flat on the third floor of the same building that he lived in before his military service.

"I bothered him until he told me," Chenle mumbles and punches in the last digit.  
"Said I wont give him dick until he does."  
Jeno doesn't doubt that, even if the explanation echoes too loudly in the hallway for him to be comfortable with it. The door springs open with a _click_ that sounds just as loud, leaving him to wonder if everything turns unbearably vast in the face of fear.

As it turns out Jaemin, maybe most unexpectedly, doesn't look particularly impressive. Most of all he's pale and visibly tired and seemingly annoyed with how Donghyuck is clearly stalling as not to leave him on his own.  
"I'm turning thirty in a few months," he's complaining when Jeno and Chenle enter his bedroom, though it seems to fall on willfully ignorant ears.  
"Really? Wouldn't have guessed it from the way you've been behaving– ah, here you are."

Chenle throws himself onto the bed knees first and Jeno only knows that the way he moves Jaemin's legs is infinitely gentler than it looks because he's often been at the receiving end of the way Chenle uses his strength.  
"Here we are," he confirms and waves for Jeno to come closer.

And here's the thing: Jeno wants to. He wants to come closer and bridge the gap and in all honesty, first of all he'd like to shake Jaemin. Shake, because he's furious and seeing him now is like rattling a volcano awake but he's lucid enough to know that if he truly hurts Jaemin he'll never forgive himself. Then, he'd cry. He's thought about it a lot, about how he's supposed to face his former best friend and every time all he came up with were frustrated tears.

Chenle will be there, he'll hold his hand in that particular way he knows Jeno tolerates because being touched otherwise when he's in distressed is the most disgusting, uncomfortable thing. And it might be mean and manipulative but Jeno wants to see what Jaemin does. If he'll feel bad, if he'll still remember that sadness never broke down his dam but anger never failed to.  
He'd cry until his tears run out and he gets all the answers he wants.

And from there, standing on the bones of their seventeen-year friendship, they'd rebuild. There is no scenario, no matter how angry Jeno gets, where he allows himself to think otherwise, not after the first flare of hurt and betrayal faded. 

The thought of his pain and sadness to have been for nothing at all is so revolting to him that he pushes any reasonable reservations about how there might be nothing left to salvage aside.

—

Jaemin looks terrified. He was already pale when Donghyuck was still fussing around the room but the moment they're left to their own devices, just the three of them, Chenle, Jaemin and Jeno, it looks like all traces of blood in his veins are wiped from existence.

"I came uninvited," Jeno begins into the quiet and Chenle's hand find Jaemin's left shin, ignoring how there is very little need for restraints.  
"I came uninvited because you never bothered to and now I had to hear from Donghyuck that you had back surgery late last year."

It's rare for Jeno to raise his voice these days and every time he does Chenle is reminded that his muscular, broad build can be intimidating rather than comforting, that the way his voice turns raspy and hoarse when he loses a hold on his carefully bottled-up feelings can be used for more than needy moans and pleas for _more_.

The thing with Jaemin is that the moment one mistakes him to be predictable he flips the script. Chenle has watched him be reluctant and sorry for himself for a while now and there's a sizeable part of him that doesn't expect him to roar.  
But then he does.

"Damn right you're uninvited," he snaps.  
"You think I want you around to nurse me back to health or whatever the fuck _this_ is?!"

The way Jaemin's room is laid out places the left edge of his bed towards the middle of it. In terms of space, this is where Chenle is: right in the middle, watching and listening as suddenly the quiet around him bursts into a million shards and past hurts unravel into a tangled mess of threads sprawled out over the floor.

None of it immediately fixes wrongs and heals wounds left too long not to fester horribly but it is the first burn of alcohol against raw skin, bulldozing the last remains of a burnt structure with charred beams that can no longer hold the weight of the past.

But it is beginning anew. And sometimes beginnings hurt.

—

Donghyuck is okay with Jaemin not inviting anyone else to Jisung's show because as it turns out Jeno doesn't want to talk to him for a while. Chenle can tell it hurts Jaemin but if you ask him, that's fair (and he knows that Jaemin thinks so too).

Instead they all go separately and line up backstage to hug Jisung in congratulations like six lost ducklings. Mark mostly just looks relieved that whatever had been brewing he's missed out on by virtue of being as much of SM's overworked golden boy as he was fourteen years ago, though if Donghyuck won't tell him about it all in a few months' time, Chenle will.

Jisung, in good old Park Jisung fashion, claims he won't cry right before breaking his own word and, when Chenle laughs and gently prods at his shoulder, whining in mortification.  
"It's just enlistment, Jisungie," Renjun tells him in a gentle tone that is reserved for him and only him. "If Donghyuck can do it so can you."  
"Excuse you?!"

They go and have dinner and it's still a little bit of a tense affair but between teasing Jisung for that very sexy body roll in his choreography (courtesy of The Taemin, which is something Jisung won't shut up about ever again) and stealing food from everyone's plates Chenle notices Jeno and Jaemin quietly having a very boringly normal conversation about sorely grown-up things that Chenle chooses to have his depositary take care of and not bother him with until it is of utmost importance.

It is painfully boring and something neither one of them would've touched on if they hadn't been having a civil conversation beforehand.

He smiles to himself in satisfaction before leaning across the table to unpromptedly claim a piece of meat Mark just took off the grill.

—

It turns out that Jaemin is going to see a physiotherapist like one would expect of any lawful good citizen. Jeno knows he is neither one of those things if it doesn't benefit him or what Donghyuck has dubbed his _dysfunctional leo pride_ (a term he loves to employ to complain about Mark's inability to stop working himself into the ground or Dejun's dramatics as well) so it comes as a very pleasant surprise.

"So how did the old man exercises go this week?" Chenle asks from where he's sprawled out across both of his partners' laps. Jeno's eyes immediately flit to where he can still catch a glimpse of Jaemin's scars, much smaller and fainter than when he first saw them a few months into Jisung's military service.

"As well as you'd expect them to go for an old man with back problems," Jaemin hums easily in return and another brick of the town he built around his heart to keep it safe falls to the ground in a flurry of dust and shadows. He pinches Chenle's nose between his fingers, which prompts a squealing laugh and Jeno joins in without even meaning to.

"Are the back problems going to be a problem for another round?"  
Jeno takes a moment to register the question and by the time it settles in Chenle is sitting up and has an arm looped around Jaemin's shoulders, making his intentions very clear.  
"I don't know," Jaemin replies and Jeno sees a fragile kind of adoration he knows his friend has never been able to share openly. Na Jaemin loves in many ways but this one he's used to keeping to himself.

"I'm fine. But you should also ask the other old man sharing our bed," Chenle's question is answered in a low, husky drawl that sends a shiver down Jeno's spine.

"We're only a year older," Jeno protests so softly. Chenle won't care and it's okay because when it comes down to it they all know. They know each other far past that, to a point where sometimes it still gets uncomfortable and Jaemin tries to hide and Jeno gets embarrassed and Chenle turns defensively frank, rather than just open for honesty's sake.

They know and breaking the silence can wait. As long as they're all on the same page they can take a little longer to find the right words, to dust off the courage sitting in the corner of their chests until they can don it as a comfortable, familiar coat rather than a suit of armour.

—

"You never answered my question," Chenle asks between two bites, breath heavy. Behind him Jaemin appreciatively runs his fingers up his thighs in a way that says _I love you_ that he can't put into proper words — and might never if unprompted.

Jeno smiles, his eyes flutter to that almost-closed crescent shape that has won over so many hearts all over the world.

"I'm not the old man with back problems," he hums comfortably and Chenle is in love with that easy, gentle confidence that he has yet to find in anyone else.  
"You're smart," Chenle waves him off. "You know what I meant."  
"Words are important," Jaemin chimes and hooks his chin over Chenle's shoulder.  
"I would know."

_You I love too_ , Chenle thinks. He won't say it, not yet, not _this_ way. An eye for an eye, a confession for a confession. It is only right. For now, however, he can wait.

"Yes, indeed," Jeno agrees with an expression devoid of any pain. Again, Chenle feels a flutter of pride for him, for _them_ , for how far they've come and how much further they will go.  
"You're not going to call me a hypocrite?" Jaemin asks and Jeno reaches up, past Chenle, to stroke his cheek.  
"I think there's nothing hypocritical about sharing your life lessons with the class."

"Well, I will," Chenle decides chirpily.  
"I will call you both a great deal of things if I don't get an answer to my question or my dick wet."  
Whatever weight was left in the room turns to sand between their fingers.

Jaemin laughs right beside his ear and once again Jeno joins in, even their breaths in tune with the other's.

  
  
  


"Let's go for another round."

**Author's Note:**

> a side note because this bit never made it into the fic: donghyuck hates jaemin's choice of cereal and is very vocal about it. (it is, in his own word, candied cardboard.)  
> but alas… the things you eat to spite your best friend…
> 
> ( [twt](http://twitter.com/lovecherriemoji) / [cc](http://curiouscat.qa/lovecherriemotion) )  
> hi would you like to talk sad dreamies in their late 20s with me?


End file.
